Hidden Engravings

Tempus Captum – captured Time.

A Project of Photographic Analysis and Exploration held in the Archeological Park of the Colosseum.

Hidden Engravings

by Leonardo Totino

Giovanni Battista Piranesi was a great Venetian engraver whose creations were characterized by incredible architectural rigor and three-dimensional constructions modeled on solid notions of perspective. His visionary genius fascinated great minds like Escher, renowned for his dizzying architectures and his fascination with mathematically perfect and abstract worlds. It is to them that the author has drawn inspiration for his project, particularly from Escher’s Italian period and Piranesi’s “Imaginary Prisons.” Seeking to highlight the structures of the Palatine Hill in a style reminiscent of the two artists, the project evolved in search of usually overlooked places so that the viewer could more easily detach the depicted locations from ordinary reality. Hence the choice to take many shots from a low angle, constructing suggestive perspectives and expansive views that could enhance arches and diagonals, elements extensively used by Piranesi. To reference Escher’s expanded, panoramic, and clearly altered vision, where the inside and outside, the below and above, are not always clear or obvious, the sky has been obscured. Removing a pivotal reference point, with the idea of abstracting the Palatine Hill from the real world and bringing it back to a place that can only exist in the imagination. The entire work has been graphically “translated” into the style of engraving, and thus onto paper soaked in the ink of the matrix, recreating an effect that can evoke it in the observer’s mind.